Jessica Schasteen

V –

Jessica is a special education teacher and supports students in grades 3-5.  This is her ninth year of teaching.  She was a general education teacher for three years across grades 2-6. Currently, Jessica is teaching in a Resource Room to support Grades 3-5 students who have specific learning disabilities and Other Health Impairments.  These students meet with her daily to work on IEP goals.

Challenges:

Jessica does not have reading program resources to support teaching in language/comprehension areas.  She is expected to use the Wilson Program to address all reading domains.  She is attempting to find support for purchase of materials, but she is frustrated by the resistance she experiences.  We discussed the need to find ways to express her needs through language related to specially designed instruction and structured literacy.  We will work on this area during our meetings as related to each module.

We discussed how she might use general education materials and apply strategies to address summarization, paraphrasing, vocabulary development and/or fluency.  We discussed various programs she might be able to have purchased at relatively low costs – such as the Strategic Instruction Model strategies or decodable texts (some of which are free). I will send her information about each of these ideas.

Problem of Practice:

Some of her students are working on the same decoding skills through the Wilson Program without making adequate progress over grade levels.  Far transfer is a challenge.

We discussed several possible routines to explore, including: gauge the explicitness of instruction, use decodable readers, change the practice routine, and work on fluency strategies

C-

Jessica hopes to gain more knowledge and confidence through her instruction and coaching in this course.  She hopes that we will continue our safe place discussions that reflect her opinions and ideas as she works to improve the literacy conditions within her classes.

Course Progress:

Jessica has completed Module 1 and will work on Modules 2 and 3 completion this coming week.  She is working on the Quadrant assignment as she is collecting comprehensive data that includes coding and language elements.

Goal Setting:

Jessica will decide on the student goal she plans to draft and apply; she will work toward phonics development or comprehension skill development.  She will make that decision prior to our next meeting.  However, we will work to improve both domains over the course interval.

Draft Goal Expectations

1. Base on student need (decoding or comprehension)
2. Identify specific students to include in the goal based on who have related skill goals on their IEPS.
3. Decide what instruments to use to measure growth.
4. Identify instructional strategies you plan to use
5. Formulate a draft goal for our next meeting and determine how to measure baseline (use IEP PLOP data?) and final goal attainment level.